


Switch all my priorities around

by saltstreets



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: (mostly), Bad Flirting, Canon Compliant, Even Worse Communication, M/M, Not A Fix-It, One-Sided Relationship, Pining, Rejection, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29386698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: It would do no good to get offended. More likely the reverse, in fact. He opted instead to concentrate on stepping carefully across the ice. It wouldn’t do to slip and risk damaging his equipment. Not to mention that Tozer would probably have a few choice remarks to make about Goodsir’s inability to even walk without needing help.
Relationships: Harry D. S. Goodsir/Solomon Tozer
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	Switch all my priorities around

**Author's Note:**

> Oo, first fic for this ship? I'll take it! Anyways, can you believe that I've been thinking about [this piece of art](https://thegoodthebadandtheart.tumblr.com/post/190326628132/hello-tumblr-will-you-allow-me-to-post-this-humble) by the remarkable Frauke for a whole entire year? And I still couldn't even get them to have sex in this. I'm ramping up to it, okay. Give it time.
> 
> It's past midnight just tipping into Saturday in my time zone, which works because I couldn't quite decide if I wanted this fic to be for Friday's "a missed opportunity" or Saturday's "opposites attract" prompt. So have both!
> 
> __[You know I hate it when you stick your hand inside my head / And switch all my priorities around / Why don't you go pick on someone your own size instead? / Go on without me, I'll just slow you down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ztP3RJW__A)   
> 

At the very least Sir John had posed the question and saved Goodsir from having to ask it himself. The snickering when he’d leapt at the offer was already enough to deal with. But still. Better to be laughed at a little and to make it back to the ships alive, than to put on a false face of bravado and find himself face to face with the monstrous bear- _thing_ , that had torn poor Lieutenant Gore to shreds. Goodsir didn’t care what the marines thought of him. He had measured the size of that print in the snow himself.

It had been a bit of a surprise that Sergeant Tozer had stepped up to take Goodsir back to _Erebus_ rather than delegating one of the other men for the job. But at least it had been Tozer and not Bryant. It might have simply been the old adage of familiarity breeding contempt proving true once more, but Bryant was far more likely to actively ridicule Goodsir than Tozer was, at least in Goodsir’s experience.

“I wouldn’t mind the lads,” Tozer said, almost kindly as they slid sideways through the narrow gap in the ice that led away from the blind. “They like a bit of fun, but they don’t mean anything by it. Not really.”

Goodsir wasn’t feeling terribly inclined to be charitable, but he also disliked conflict. So he merely nodded, accepting. He supposed that Tozer did have a point. The marines might enjoy mocking anyone they perceived as weak, but at the end of the day it was just that- mockery. Sticks and stones and et cetera. Not that it made said mockery any less wearying. He did note that Tozer had excluded himself from complicity in his statement, though he’d been grinning away with the rest of them when Goodsir had requested the escort.

It would do no good to get offended. More likely the reverse, in fact. Men like the marines -like Tozer- only wanted to garner a reaction. He opted instead to concentrate on stepping carefully across the ice. It wouldn’t do to slip and risk damaging his equipment. Not to mention that Tozer would probably have a few choice remarks to make about Goodsir’s inability to even walk without needing help.

“Can you shoot, Doctor Goodsir?”

“Mister Goodsir,” Goodsir corrected absently, adjusting the bundle of the tripod in his arms and stepping over a block of ice that had tumbled from the high, labyrinthine walls of the stuff through which they were winding their way. A good thing that the tall, slender masts of the ships could still be seen spiking up into the sky, else it would be easy to get turned around down here. “No. I’ve never needed to.”

“P’rhaps you ought to learn.”

“My duties lie more in the repairing of bullet holes than the making of them,” said Goodsir, a bit tartly. He could sense Tozer building up to a snide gibe and wasn’t in the mood. He was already on edge from having been under the cloth hood while capturing the picture and then having to hover in the blind. He could almost still hear the frantic ticking of his pocket watch, deafening in his ears.

“It’s a practical skill to have.” Tozer was insistent. “And not just for the bear- alright, we were having a bit of fun with you back in the blind, but it’s true enough this is a dangerous part of the world. Best a man know how to protect himself. Then he can really call himself a man.” Tozer grinned at him, not in any way nastily, but Goodsir was already bristling at the remark. He didn’t care unduly about the implication belittling his worth- he neither bothered much with his own image nor put enough stock in the opinion of the marines, not even that of Tozer who wasn’t entirely brainless, for it to be a serious hurt. But he was sick and tired of the constant jabbing. It was exhausting, this brand of casual cruelty that was to be expected from men like Tozer, for all that Goodsir knew the sergeant could also be a caring personality to those he deemed his own sort. Goodsir figured he fell firmly outside of that sphere.

There was a retort on the tip of his tongue (precisely _what_ said retort would have been, he didn’t even quite know but he also didn’t want to say _nothing_ ) but Tozer was still speaking. “I could teach you, if you liked. I know you’re busy an’ all, but when you’ve a spare moment. It wouldn’t be no bother.”

“ _You?”_ said Goodsir, with perhaps a bit too much incredulity, taken aback. “ _Teach_ me?”

“I’m a good instructor.” Tozer’s eyebrows furrowed defensively. “And- and the best shot out of everyone in this expedition besides.”

It hadn’t precisely been Tozer’s teaching skills nor his ability with a firearm that had prompted Goodsir’s scepticism. But he let it go. “I don’t think we would manage to find the time, me being berthed on _Erebus_ and you on _Terror_ ,” he said, painstakingly polite and biting back the desire to snap at Tozer. “Although I…appreciate the offer, Sergeant.”

“Well I-” Tozer stumbled a bit over his words, and then repeated himself rather more gruffly, “I mean to say. It’s something you ought to learn. This isn’t an easy voyage we’ve signed on for, so’s you should know.”

Goodsir didn’t roll his eyes at the condescension, but it was a close run thing. “However useless you might think me, I’m well aware of the areas in which I am of use. And of those in which I fall short. No need to lose sleep thinking I have no notion of my abilities.”

Tozer looked almost abashed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“But it is what you said.”

“I’m not meaning to insult you, Doctor Goodsir,” said Tozer, a touch of frustration in his tone, and now Goodsir wasn’t entirely certain who it was aimed at. “I don’t care what job any man’s got onboard, everyone on this voyage ought to be prepared and capable. That’s the way I see it. And so yeah, I think-”

What it was, exactly, that Tozer thought Goodsir never found out: at that moment there was the sound of a muffled crash from behind them and a piercing scream. Tozer spun on the heavy heel of his boot, swinging the rifle down from where it was slung over his shoulder and into steady hands in one fluid motion. Goodsir twisted as well, a bit more slowly with his arms full of the tripod and bulky camera.

Gunshots rang out- and more screaming.

Tozer sprang forward a step, and then stopped to shoot Goodsir a look. His eyes were wide and alarmed but focussed, and Goodsir briefly thought that Sergeant Tozer might be a bit of a bully, but he was a competent one at the least.

They weren’t terribly far from the ships. And the shots were coming from behind them.

“Go,” Goodsir said, although the thought of Tozer leaving him was a fearful one. But going back to the blind and the commotion with Tozer was surely worse than fleeing to the ships without him. “I’ll be alright- you’re needed.”

Tozer didn’t need to be told twice. He jerked his head in a nod, and darted back through the maze of ice towards the blind.

\--

The next time they were alone together was a hundred years later. A hundred lifetimes. A hundred miles. More. God only knew.

Goodsir had been set the thankless task of examining the men in Hickey’s little ramshackle band: as though there would be anything to find other than stomachs swollen on emptiness and teeth rattling in skulls.

Tozer was in better nick than the greater number of the mutineers Goodsir had seen, but that wasn’t saying much. There were still great dark bruises all down his arms and splotched messily across his too-visible ribs.

“It’s my back mostly,” he said, hunched over as Goodsir circled him. “I thought it was only from sleeping on the ground at first, but it feels deeper than that.”

“You’re dying, Sergeant,” said Goodsir flatly. “But I wouldn’t make too much of it. Every last one of us is dying.”

“You know, it’s not the illness that frightens me,” said Tozer in a quiet voice. Goodsir was so surprised to hear Tozer -Sergeant Tozer, brawny, bold, and brash- admitting to being frightened that he didn’t respond, and Tozer continued unprompted. “It’s the. The creature. I’ve seen what it does.” He looked up at Goodsir, and his eyes were wide and honest. “I can’t get it out of my head. It’s all I think about- what I see last thing closing my eyes when I try to sleep, and what wakes me up every morning.”

“Death is a common preoccupation of mankind. Especially when it draws near.”

“It’s not so much the dying as the, the not knowing just what that thing does with us. With our souls.”

“I remember you once telling me that no one here signed up for an easy voyage,” said Goodsir. “And that it was your opinion that every man was expected to be capable. Prepared.” He prodded Tozer’s spine with just an edge of more force than was strictly necessary, and Tozer winced.

It was slightly unfair of him. A spirit-swallowing polar deity stalking the expedition had never been in the cards in the way that run-of-the-mill hardship had been. But Goodsir didn’t particularly care about being _fair._ It wasn’t _fair_ that he’d been kidnapped by mutineers. It wasn’t _fair_ that he’d had to cut Billy Gibson into a meal. It wasn’t _fair_ that he was going to die here, of starvation or lead poisoning or a simple knife to the belly.

“I’m sorry. About that.”

Goodsir looked at Tozer. He really did seem fairly miserable. He had been confident and swaggering once. A brash man. Difficult to deal with, maybe, but capable. Dependable. And truly, Goodsir still disliked conflict. It was only that he had become so accustomed to it. He sighed. “It doesn’t matter much now.” Tozer might be in fairly decent health compared to some of his companions, but it all still resolved itself into the same, clear equation. Two sandglasses might run a second slower or faster against each other, but they would both run out eventually. And the watch bell would ring. Tozer having the better part of all his teeth still in his mouth and feet that could still march only accounted to just a few more grains of sand in his glass. Hardly a difference of time worth noting.

And besides, Goodsir still didn’t care much for the opinions of the marines. Even less so than ever before: whatever lingering goodwill he may have once felt towards Tozer for being friendlier and slightly wittier than at least Bryant had decidedly been drained away.

He made a perfunctory examination of Tozer’s soft gums and Tozer didn’t grumble. The only reaction Goodsir got was the increasingly stiff set of his shoulders and a tightening of Tozer’s jaw after Goodsir had finished with his mouth and moved on to his swollen knees.

Finally some quavering tension in the air snapped and Tozer blurted, “I think you’re a- a fine man, you know. I’ve- admired you.”

Goodsir blinked. Several times. That was definitely not what he had been expecting Tozer to say. “Forgive me if that declaration comes as a surprise.”

“It’s only the truth.” Tozer didn’t show any sign of recognising exactly how much of a non sequitur this line of thinking was to Goodsir’s ears. Instead he only smiled weakly. “Why’d you think I was so quick to volunteer walking you back that day in the blind?”

“I was under the impression you thought me a wilting violet too frightened of his own shadow to walk a quarter-mile alone, and less of a man for it,” Goodsir deadpanned.

“No- no, you were right to not want to be out on your own. I see that now. I was too- a lot of us were idiots not to see the danger in front of us. I shouldn’t have laughed at you,” Tozer added. “And I knew that even then, a bit.”

“Well.” Goodsir began putting away his meagre supplies briskly. “Thank goodness. At last my bruised ego can begin to mend. Thank you for that.”

But Tozer didn’t seem to pick up on the meaningful hint that Goodsir would rather him be on his merry way and leave him to what little peace solitude might bring. “Suppose it was really me, being the coward then,” he said lowly. “As I’m a coward now. I’ve been- I’m afraid. I’m afraid all the time, out here.”

“It isn’t cowardice to be afraid,” Goodsir offered without any real intent asides from moving Tozer along, and this odd little crisis with him. “Particularly not of something so dangerous and unknown. It only means you’ve got common sense.”

Tozer stared at him, and then laughed. Goodsir had never heard Tozer laugh like that before- warmly and almost shyly. “That might be as close a compliment as you’ve paid me, you know.” He swallowed. “but that’s not quite what I meant. I wish-” Tozer seemed to choke on his words. “I wish things had gone differently.”

He was almost unrecognisable as the marine sergeant who had walked with Goodsir that day, and had offered to teach him how to shoot a rifle. That man had walked tall and with an easy confidence. He’d been neatly trimmed and at attention. The man who was curled in on himself in front of Goodsir now was bowed and fearful.

If things had gone differently- if the Tuunbaq hadn’t appeared that day. If Tozer had guided him all the way back to _Erebus,_ and said nothing more about it. If the marines hadn’t snickered quite so loud and Goodsir hadn’t felt quite so defensive, and had said yes to Tozer’s offer. To believe the man, it had been made in good faith. It could have all gone very differently indeed. If Tozer had asked him another day. If the ships had been frozen in closer together. If the ships hadn’t been frozen in at all.

But it hadn’t gone differently, it had gone the way that it had. That was the nature of things.

Goodsir set down his dwindling roll of bandages with an air of vague defeat, resigned to having this conversation. Whatever it was. “No good in wishing now. Not here. But,” he added, “if things had been different, I do think I might have taken you up on your offer, Sergeant. After all, you are the best shot on the expedition.”

It was only meant as a small kindness, a little something to sooth Tozer’s all-too-obviously stumbling soul on its shambling path towards whatever fate awaited them all. If forced to admit it, Goodsir found that he didn’t actually harbour much ill-intent towards Tozer, who seemed just as if not _more_ lost than any of them. But at the words Tozer looked up at him with an unexpected shine of hope in his eyes.

“They do say that opposites attract,” he ventured.

 _Attract-_ Goodsir felt wrongfooted. But before he could try and clarify what Tozer could possibly mean by that, the man leaned in and, with surprising delicacy, kissed him.

For a moment Goodsir was entirely taken aback, only able to allow himself to be kissed without objection or response. Then the moment passed and he tried to move away, but Tozer had pulled back first, his already ruddy face even more flushed. “Ah- sorry,” he mumbled, “for that as well. Just thought- never mind.”

A not entirely uncomfortable silence descended between them. The wind scraped against the dirty canvas of the tent. Somewhere in the camp outside, someone was striking what sounded like two pieces of rock together in a steady, even beat like a heart.

“Well,” said Goodsir, leaning back and feeling mildly bemused by the entire affair, “that’s something, I suppose.”

Tozer snorted, seemingly in spite of himself. “Practical of you, puttin’ it as such.”

“Have to be practical, Sergeant.”

“I suppose.”

It wasn’t a nice thing to say, but Goodsir said it anyway. “Somebody with whom I believe you’re acquainted recently told me that _practical_ takes precedence around here. So don’t mind me if I follow that advice.” Tozer flinched visibly. “I wonder if you might not fully agree with that statement. But it seems to be the law of the land and you’re the one following that law God-knows-where, so you’d best learn to accept it.” He stood.

“Wait,” said Tozer a bit desperately, which just made Goodsir feel sorry for him. “Doctor Goodsir-”

“I’m still not a doctor,” said Goodsir, although more gently than he had intended, or had even believed himself still capable of being. “And now I never will be.”

“ _Doctor_ Goodsir,” Tozer insisted, with emphasis, “I shouldn’t have- but. I mean, that’s- I wasn’t making fun, just now. With. When I. You know.”

Goodsir looked at Tozer a good long time. His straggling curls and gaunt face, streaked with dirt. The little raw patch of skin under his eye and the hunch of his once-proud shoulders. A handsome man brought low. _Poor devil,_ Goodsir thought, _but not poorer than the rest of us._ “I didn’t think you were,” he said finally, when Tozer had begun to squirm under the weight of the non-response. “But sometimes, some people are just _too_ opposite, Sergeant.” He sighed. “Now if you wouldn’t mind sending in whoever’s next to be seen to. I still have a job to do. Apparently.”

He half expected an argument or at least some sort of a riposte from Tozer, who had never been the sort not to get the last word in when he could manage it. But Tozer said nothing, just seemed to accept his answer onto slumped shoulders.

But he straightened when he stood, and, leaving the tent, gave Goodsir a brief salute before pushing through the canvas. It was a proper salute, too: sharp, a neat geometry among the ravaged mess that surrounded them. Goodsir thought about it all though his subsequent inspections of chattering teeth and inflamed elbows.

He did not speak to Sergeant Tozer again.


End file.
